I can share some observations I've made in my time here.
1. Commenting seems to happen mostly between people who are familiar with each other, so try to make some friends.
2. Put a link to your story in your signature here so we don't have to stalk you to check out your story. (I totally did, and it looks interesting, and I put you in my TBR list (don't get excited, I have like, 10,000 miles of TBR list, but I'll try to get there)).
3. After reading your story's description, I must warn you that if you plan to have any M/M romantic interaction, even if it doesn't get explicit, you should tag that or mention it blatantly and prominently somewhere, or the straights will have tantrums (although here on SH it's less "tantrums" and more passive-aggressive stuff like putting you in a dropped list, which is... nicer than other places.) You are likely to get slapped with a 1-star rating for surprise M/M.
4. With LGBTQ+ content, you'll get a lot of "ghost readers". This is an international site, and a lot of folks still have to be very careful, so they probably don't even have SH accounts, no reading lists, and you'll get no interaction at all from them. You'll just see your read numbers accumulate, and smile to yourself and hope they're enjoying it. A lot of them are using VPNs and you'll see a lot of (empty) in your traffic list. That's them.
5. That list where you can see readers' chapter progression only includes people who've put you in a public reading list. If they put you in a private list your reader count will go up, but they won't appear there. Try not to get too hung up on all that. I have "81 readers" on my novel, but only about 3-4 of those are actively reading, and then I have a bunch of "ghost readers" - impossible to tell how many. And then there are the people who chucked me directly into a dropped list, but that still adds to thetotal reader count (mwahahaha).
